Thursday, September 30, 2010

I know ya'll love Krugman and that Bob Herbert hits 'em out of the park every time he puts fingertips to keyboard, but you also need to be reading Timothy Egan, who may be the best opinion writer at the NYT, and not just because he's pals with The Dude.

Japanese adult actress Saori Hara (pink robe) and actor Hayama Hiro (blue robe), both wear 3D glasses as they watch a replay of their acting during the making of "3D Sex and Zen", with director Christopher Sun (standing, center) in Hong Kong on August 13, 2010. The producers are hoping the erotic period drama based in ancient China will prove a titillating hit with 3D-glasses-wearing audiences and develop a lucrative, niche market for pornography productions in future. (REUTERS/Bobby Yip) #

When I was a law student I remember getting up on Saturday morning to tune in Comedy Central in it's earlier days before it was all Stewart, Colbert, Cartman and some hack being roasted with the same crap they roasted the last hack with. In particular I watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 religiously. In fact, my middle-aged nerd cred allows me to say I've got about 150 episodes on tape.

Hard to believe I'm single, isn't it?

But enough about me, let's talk about what I think. One of the memorable episodes was 'Cave Dwellers' a riotously bad swords & sandals flick (episode 301 -- "NERD!") that starred Miles O'Keefe, his loin cloth and a hang-glider. During the opening credits one of the commenting puppets asks, "How much O'Keefe is in this movie?" for which it is replied, "Miles O'Keefe".

I got 14 out of 15 on the Pew Religious Knowledge Test and I'm definitely in the Agnostic/Atheist category. This put me, apparently in the top 1 or 2 percent. Suck.on.that. This is going to make me sooooooooooooooooo much money and get me soooooooooooo laid. Because what is better in America than knowing enough to be considered moderately intelligent and well educated...other than being accused of being a socialist?

Turns out I was pitching a perfect score until the very end when I blew the last question, which shamefully was more a historical than religious question. (To turn off the sarcasm for a second, it didn't strike me as that difficult, in fact it's rather easy except for the last question).

More than two-years ago, the Washington Post's then Ombudsman took David Broder to task for taking fees to speak before lobbying groups (and then frankly using their talking points in his pablumatic columns). Broder flat out lied, got called on it, and said he wouldn't do it anymore.

And here I was just assuming Richard Cohen was still the nation's tritest Op-Ed writer. I am crestfallen. For Tom Friedman's 'Mustache of Understanding' (credit Atrios) has demanded the mantle:

The Tea Party that has gotten all the attention, the amorphous, self-generated protest against the growth in government and the deficit, is what I’d actually call the “Tea Kettle movement” — because all it’s doing is letting off steam.

Oh, you see what he did there? Considering the fact it became the "Tea Party" only after it's bleaters found out what "teabagging" meant requires that any other nickname would be trite beyond belief. Enter Thomas Friedman. I bet he spent at least six months coming up with it, so one Friedman Unit, an "F.U." But enough about that, let's see how the Mustache would make everything just right...suck.on.this!

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

...a survey that measured Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths. In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term "blind faith."

A majority of Protestants, for instance, couldn't identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, according to the survey, released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Four in 10 Catholics misunderstood the meaning of their church's central ritual, incorrectly saying that the bread and wine used in Holy Communion are intended to merely symbolize the body and blood of Christ, not actually become them...

American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

"These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education.

A series of military promotions reinforced the leading role of the armed forces in North Korean political life, as the youngest son and sister of Kim Jong-il, were made four-star generals before a landmark meeting of the Korean Workers’ Party on Tuesday.

Things haven't looked too good for Russ Feingold recently. The Wisconsin Senator who is generally a reliable progressive, if occasionally a tad sanctimonious, is having a tough reelection campaign. In a year that has been good for Republicans (for once it really is good news for them) Feingold had recently fallen double-digits behind his Republican opponent, Ron Johnson, in some polls (that aren't Rasmussen).

But as they say the Lord works in mysterious ways...especially when you are running against an idiot.

A senior Palestinian official says President Mahmoud Abbas will quit Mideast peace talks if Israel resumes construction in West Bank settlements now that 10-month-old building restrictions have expired.

Palestinians have repeatedly threatened to quit U.S.-mediated talks relaunched earlier this month in Washington if Israel does not extend the freeze on new settlement construction that ended at midnight.

Israel has not offered to renew the restrictions, despite demands from Washington and the Palestinians to do so.

Sadly, this only gets reported in loud detail when the Palestinians exercise their turn, so the trick is how to turn this into their fault. I have no doubt Wolf Blitzer and FoxNews are up to the task.

Fending off demands that he resign over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress he had found a legal way to compensate Iraqi detainees who suffered "grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the United States armed forces."

"It's the right thing to do," Rumsfeld declared in 2004. "And it is my intention to see that we do."

Six years later, the U.S. Army is unable to document a single payment for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

So why did it [voting on extending Tax Cuts, except for Rich People] fail? According to a very plugged in Senate aide, Senators debating the issue were very aware that the polling was on their side. Yet, paradoxically, this ended up tipping the balance against holding the vote. Senate Dems felt they were alreadly winning on the issue, and in the end they thought a vote risked upsetting a dynamic that was already playing in their favor.

Do you think he recorded phone calls he made to here where he informed her he was masturbating while they were talking?

What O'Reilly did - according to the suit - was repeatedly proposition Mackris. In the conversations recorded by Mackris, he allegedly suggests that she buy a vibrator, boasts of teaching women to masturbate, discusses what kind of sex they should have and launches into 'a vile and degrading monologue'.

Crooks and Liars and Gawker have what FoxNews left out of O'Reilly's interview with Jon Stewart...so their precious viewers wouldn't have their greek chorus de-tuned:

I know what this is. I come from Jersey—it's the same thing: "I'm not saying your mother's a whore. I'm just saying she has sex for money. With people." [F]ox News used to be all about, you don't criticize a president during wartime. It's unacceptable, it's treasonous, it gives aid and comfort to the enemy. All of a sudden, for some reason you can run out there and say, "Barack Obama is destroying the fabric of this country."

He closed with this unanswerable question: "How many tyrants do you know that really suffer because they can't get cloture?"

The time has come for you to use your influence to pick a day between now and the November election and declare it Masturbate to Christine O'Donnell Day in either the state of Delaware or the entire United States of America. This needs to happen, and you're the only guy who can do it.

Senate Democrats said Thursday that Republicans were preventing votes on some of President Barack Obama's U.S. district court nominees, a game-changing tactic that would bring retaliation against a GOP president some day.

[O'Donnell] is what politics produces when you divorce politics from government. She is what you get when you sell to the country that nothing government can do will help, and that the government is an alien thing, and that politics is nothing more than the active public display of impotent grievance.

She is what politics produces when you turn it into a game show and the coverage of it over to a generation of high-technology racetrack touts. She is what you get when political journalism reduces politics to numbers on a scoreboard, divorcing it from the real-world consequences of what are increasingly seen as cute little eccentric decisions.

She is what politics produces when we abandon self-government for self-gratification. And that's the real obvious irony in her victory on Tuesday night, and the only thing about it that truly matters. Christine O'Donnell's campaign is a successful exercise in angry, misfit masturbation, with as little to do with the deadly problems this country faces as some guy wanking in the balcony of a grindhouse has to do with Romeo and Juliet.

Scalia is truly an embarrassment. The one thing even the "originalists" and the "living Constitutionalists" should agree upon is the very FIRST thing one looks for in a statute is the wording.

The Fourteenth Amendment:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In Bush v. Gore, he joined the majority that stopped the vote recount in Florida in 2000 - because they said equal protection required it. Is there really any reason to believe that the drafters - who, after all, were trying to help black people achieve equality - intended to protect President Bush's right to have the same procedures for a vote recount in Broward County as he had in Miami-Dade? (If Justice Scalia had been an equal-protection originalist in that case, he would have focused on the many black Floridians whose votes were not counted - not on the white President who wanted to stop counting votes.)

It's funny who Tony thinks gets the 14th Amendment's protections, as the last time I looked in 2000 George Bush wasn't a freed slave.

If I lived in Arizona Nevada and had the vote, even though Sharron Angle is beyond nuts, I'd vote for her. Better nuts than this disgusting, cynical, partisan Washington kabuki dance, when people's lives and dignity are at stake.

Yes, and I'm sure the logic of "Things aren't happening the way I like, so I'm going to vote for the person that truly truly passionately wants to strip away whatever rights a gay person has already obtained" is the way to go.

I'm sure if Andy was a black person in 1940s Mississippi he'd vote for Theodore Bilbo, if only he'd be allowed to vote, because at least you knew where he stood on the issue of civil rights.

Suppose you had spent the last five years actually believing what you read from the usual suspects — the WSJ opinion pages, National Review, right-wing economists, etc.. Here’s what would have happened:

In 2006 you would have believed that there was no housing bubble.

In 2007 you would have believed that the troubles of subprime couldn’t possibly spread to the financial system as a whole.

In 2008 you would have believed that we weren’t in a recession — and that the failure of Lehman was unlikely to have bad consequences for the real economy.

In 2009 you would have believed that high inflation was just around the corner.

At the beginning of 2010 you would have believed that sky-high interest rates were just around the corner.

I'm going to take a wild guess here and say it's going to be blamed on illegal immigrants and Muslims, at least in all NewsCorp propaganda outlets:

The owner of an Iowa egg company says in testimony prepared for a House hearing that he was "horrified" to learn that his eggs may have sickened as many as 1,600 people in an outbreak of salmonella poisoning this summer.

Austin "Jack" DeCoster and his son, Peter DeCoster, are scheduled to testify before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee Wednesday. In testimony released by the company, the two men say they believe an ingredient sold to them by an outside supplier may be to blame for the outbreak.

An FDA investigation found towers of manure and bug and rodent infestations at the farms, and an investigation by the House subcommittee found that the companies had received hundreds of positive results for salmonella in the two years before the outbreak.

Ruskiewicz went to Kratz in 2008 asking for support for her pardon application. She said they met in his office, where he asked an odd question about whether she thought it was appropriate for a boss to have a sexual relationship with a secretary. She said she was confused but grateful for his support.

He gave her his cell phone number, and she texted him later to thank him for the help — a move she now calls a mistake.

She said his messages soon turned suggestive. She recalled him texting while he was on vacation in Michigan with his family asking her to impress him "in between naps." She said he later pestered her when she didn't answer.

This is the third woman (oops, make it fourth) to come forward on the "Sexting Wisconsin DA", the first was a woman going through an "abuse" case, the second was invited to the ever-romantic event known as an autopsy and now this.

Katz is a Republican, which naturally means nothing -- as opposed to if it were a Democrat, then we'd have Malkin and Morning Doocies going apeshit that this has some broad meaning. But I think it suffices to just sum him up as a scumbag, regardless of Party affiliation.

I bet he enjoys tasering reports...just something for Digby to look into.

It does seem that ironically -- in a tragic way -- these blatant bible-beating homophobes do seem to have a proclivity for molesting young boys. I suggest we prevent them from being teachers in our schools:

Two young men in Atlanta have filed lawsuits against nationally known televangelist Bishop Eddie Long, alleging that Long coerced them into having sex in exchange for luxury trips, cars and cash. In addition to preaching against homosexuality to his Atlanta mega-church, which seats 25,000, Long has appeared on national television to argue against same-sex marriage.

But I understand that after all the faux hoopla to gin-up viewers to switch over from O'Reilly and Hannity to watch her sit all glassy-eyed, Sarah Palin quit, as usual, on her plans to show up for her daughter's rare display of public hip-gyrating.

But don't be hard on Sarah (or on Bristol -- oops too late) she just wanted to teach Bristol a lesson by pulling out at the last minute.

Though this is snark-worthy (and really, it's such easy target-practice):

...it turns out Palin is about as good at dancing as she is at using contraception.

And here's the thing: the slightly mocking tone with which some journalists are portraying these tea party conservatives is probably helping them with the broad swath of voters who don't much trust the media. If some of these voters are fed up with the establishment, that would include the establishment press. O'Donnell, for one, has cleverly brushed aside questions about her checkered finances by saying that helps her identify with struggling workers.

I don't immediately associate having dabbled in witchcraft with senatorial service. But if see the 11-year-old Bill Maher clip one more time I'm going to feel like making my TV set disappear.

Ah, but whatever Newt Gingrich wants to bilge up cannot get enough coverage for the Putz.

It also compounds the culpability of media moguls who deliberately popularize miscegenation in films directed toward adolescents and pre-adolescents. In the midst of this onslaught against our youth, parents need to be reminded that they have a natural obligation, as essential as providing food and shelter, to instill in their children an acceptance of appropriate ethnic boundaries for socialization and for marriage.

The sociobiological warfare that our youth is subjected to is likely to be even more diabolical since it appears to deliberately exploit a biological theory of sexual imprinting at the critical period of sexual maturity. Movies like this past year's spate of miscegenationist titles, Save the Last Dance, Crazy / Beautiful and O, a parody of Othello, appear deliberately designed to exploit the critical period of sexual imprinting in their target audiences of white pre-adolescent girls and adolescent young women.

Oh man, "Miscegenation"? This "youthful indiscretion" was written in 2001 when he was at the tender age of 47. Who is this guy, the Theodore Bilbo (most racist hobbit ever!) of New York? I mean the other one, besides the moron running for Governor.

Whatever, we can be confident this will warrant no Drudge or Breitbart headline so it need not trouble our media's tender twittering fingers.

I know it's obscure and hidden in the voluminous federal law and Supreme Court Decisions so possibly Newt would have missed it, but there is already fairly well established federal law making it illegal to impose Sharia law on the United States. After an exhaustive search, I found this:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Dabbling in Witchcraft in early middle-age is no big deal if you're a Republican (and frankly, the bizarre thing about that is, it is not all that bizarre at all -- especially compared to the rest of the Christine O'Donnell resume), but being a Community Organizer in your twenties is incredibly dangerous socialism if you're a Democrat.

Update: Dammit, now Mehlman is telling Maron he's a "libertarian Republican". I hate this cowardly, "Oh, I'm really more in the nature of a libertarian" backpeddling stuff from Republicans. Give me a break. You're a Republican. Just like the Tea Partiers. Sheesh.

Oh, and on a not-entirely-unrelated note, I see at TPM that Fat Newt wants to outlaw Sharia law in the United States. And I'm wondering if that's because he's terrified of what Sharia law would say about a guy with his history of philandering and dumping wives on their sickbeds and the like. Does anyone know?

Atrocities by soldiers are nothing new in war, including from American soldiers -- but the fact that this occurs is never really contemplated at the time wars start, or in the open reflexive praise we are supposed to give to our arms -- and never utter the dark stain of what making a killing machine sometimes entails. The xenophobia of never serving Newt Gingrich is the prototypical American asshole.

A group of US soldiers is facing accusations of randomly targeting and killing Afghan civilians for sport, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Least favorite: The Conspirators. Got the sense that Redford didn't know if he wanted to go full throttle on the military tribunals or make a straightforward historical drama. Plus, ultimately devolved into a "noble lawyer" movie, and there are definitely enough of those. Wasn't bad, just not my favorite.

If we put Lindsey Lohan, Snooki, Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell and Mel Gibson (it says something that there's only one guy on the overexposed and incredibly annoying list -- we know day-to-day life splits this rather evenly, thanks TMZ mentality) on a desert island...

...we could devote more time to finding new ridiculous people to overexpose.

What the hell is it with Chuck Todd and weather? Has Al Roker failed to genuflect appropriately in his goateed presence? Was he once attacked by a group of bowler wielding Magritte enthusiasts (aka 'A Meet and Magritte'*)?

*Don't groan, that one hurt me to write more than it hurt you to read.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

The poverty rate jumped to 14.3 percent in 2009, up from 13.2 percent a year earlier and the highest rate since 1994, the Census Bureau said Thursday. Last year, a record 43.6 million people were in poverty, up from 39.8 million in 2008 — the third consecutive increase.

Jacob Isom—the rattail-coiffed hero who swiped a Koran from right-wing fanatics and ran—has a dream. "I want to be in High Times," he told me by telephone. Then he showed a t-shirt screenprinted with his face.

...according to documents the newspaper obtained via Freedom of Information Act during a two year investigation, Withers was also working for J. Edgar Hoover's FBI.

According to the documents, Withers followed King the day before his murder and told FBI agents about a meeting King had with suspected black militants and later divulged details he learned at King's funeral in Atlanta.

The alleged spying took place from at least 1968 until 1970. Withers, according to documents, passed on tips and photographs to the FBI which detailed an insider view of the civil rights movement as well as politics, business and everyday life in Memphis' African-American community.

"It is an amazing betrayal," Athan Theoharis, a historian at Marquette University who has written books about the F.B.I. told the New York Times. "It really speaks to the degree that the F.B.I. was able to engage individuals within the civil rights movement. This man was so well trusted."

Good thing nothing like that happens anymore, oh yeah, right, and just to make it all bi-partisany.

Oh sure, I could post a few more wisecracks about Christine O'Donnell and how she thinks evolution isn't true because we would have developed oven-mitts for hands (speaking of mittens). However, all the good masturbation jokes always get used up in the first ten to fifteen minutes and then I lose interest fast. Besides, the real irony of her victory is it caused Chris Matthews to self-pleasure live on tv (sad really, as "Whack Off Live" is already a show on FoxNews)

Instead, let's have some real legitimate outrage, international edition. Somebody has observed Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and evolved their outrage for profit model up a notch:

Holocaust denier David Irving will begin leading tours of the former Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka next week.

The British historian is also scheduled to lead a group of American and British tourists in the former Warsaw ghetto. His tour brochure promises an experience far removed from the "tourist attractions of Auschwitz". He will charge the tour participants $2,650 each.

For those of you unfamiliar who Irving is, Worst Human on the Planet may be too insignificant a title.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

So Ed Cox will be the latest New York State GOP chairman to go down in flames. Not only did Cox's man, Rick Lazio, get crushed in last night's primary, but his kid, Chris Cox, got whupped in his House primary out on Long Island. And Baby Cox went down after some dirty tricks that would have made his granddad, Richard Nixon, proud.

Bye, Ed. Bye, Chris.

On a not-entirely-unrelated note: the other day I saw Alex Gibney's "Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer" at the Toronto International Film Festival. Carl Paladino, the guy that will send Ed Cox packing, was advised by none other than Roger Stone, who makes an appearance in the film. So now we have a Stone general to look forward to in New York. Should be an interesting autumn.

Thus is wasn't exactly a surprise when former "proud union guy" Mike Golic came out slamming the gesture, nor was it a shock when serial hair-care products consumer/ESPN morning host Mike Greenberg insisted that 99% of the calls and emails ESPN got were critical of the players. The sports media establishment bashing player union "greed" isn't exactly a new broadcast meme.

But when I heard loudmouth large-nostriled afternoon host Colin Cowherd go off on unions in general on my way out of Lexington, I nearly had an aneurysm. Cowherd actually came out in support of the NFL players -- although his reasoning there wasn't exactly clear to me -- but he said that in general, he tended to be "anti-union" because unions apparently don't encourage elite performance and creativity, and instead just protect the lazy, the weak, the unremarkable. Then he went into this long rant about how great football players like Drew Brees were remarkable and irreplaceable, as are -- and this isn't a joke -- radio stars like Rush Limbaugh, and appalling American Idol douche-twat Simon Cowell.

Then, to steelworkers and teachers, he said this: "Steelworkers? I love you. But guess what? You can be replaced. You can't replace Rush."

And there's only one Simon Cowell, he said.

Leave aside for a minute the fact that Cowherd's concept of talent and specialness is completely fucked (not only is Simon Cowell not irreplaceable, he should have his head chopped off the next time he opens his mouth on national television) and forget also the obvious provocation of lionizing a fat, racist slob who hasn't worked an honest day in his life like Rush Limbaugh while simultaneously ripping steelworkers and teachers for being lazy. In fact it wouldn't be worth mentioning the views of this half-bright sportscaster at all, except that his underlying point, that the worth of human beings is measured entirely in how much capitalist revenue they generate, is now basically hegemonous in American society -- to the point where even ordinary people who decades ago would have been union workers or at least union supporters believe it implicitly.

Almost everyone who has a job is economically "replaceable," but shit, outside an Ayn Rand novel, there's more to it than that...

That kind of thinking is spreading, because our pop culture priests have succeeded in filling the population with shame and nervous self-loathing to the point where they think of anyone who isn't an employer as a parasite, and anyone who isn't rich and famous, or trying to be, as a loser. People even think of themselves this way, which is why there are so many down-and-out people voting to give tax breaks to the same bankers who've been robbing them for years, and booing when the mere concept of unions shows up for a few seconds in a football game. It's sad, and a lot of it's the fault of mean little assholes like Cowherd. Shame on him.

Here's your lesson for today from plainly handsome Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, never ever ever be moderately attractive and be near men, because you are totally asking to be abused and plainly are less than human, because the humans being men, they have no responsibility for their conduct.

Yesterday, it was proclaimed that we on the "left", apparently both professional and amateur, oppose Glenn Beck's efforts to make money off of the tragedy of 9/11 because we hate the free market -- at least according to Glenn Beck.

The Iowa egg farm at the center of a massive salmonella outbreak received hundreds of positive results for salmonella in the two years before its eggs sickened more than 1,500 people, congressional investigators said Tuesday.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

The talking heads of the media discuss the lapse of the Bush-tax cuts, a deficit shitbomb if ever there was one, falsely as a tax-hike.

Of course, these same heads are mostly wealthy. Charles Gibson in 2008 blithely declared a family income of $200,000 as not a lot of money and unbelievably common -- to an audience that laughed at him and he didn't have a fucking clue why. Which is true, when you are making $10 million a year, like Charles Gibson.

...anyone in the media talking about raising income tax rates on the top two income brackets should have to disclose their possible conflict of interest in the debate. It wouldn't take much, just a simple declaration: "Full disclosure, I fall into the top tax bracket myself, so I would personally be affected by changing this rate."

While the United States has a hefty-deficit that will lead to someone, not the wealthy mind you, being punished, Dan Froomkin notes that the source of much of that deficit is going along swimmingly when it comes to money:

The [GAO] report makes a direct link between U.S. government spending -- including $642 billion on U.S. military operations there and $24 billion for training and equipping the Iraqi security forces -- and Iraq's cumulative surplus of $52.1 billion through the end of 2009.

For comparison purposes, Iraq's annual gross domestic product is $65.8 billion. Meanwhile, the U.S. national debt has soared from $6.4 trillion to $13.4 trillion since former president George W. Bush invaded Iraq and decided to borrow the money for wars and slash taxes.

A few years ago, Res Ipsa, was kind enough to send me Lawrence Wright's 'The Looming Tower'. The subject matter was the rise of Islamic Extremism, it's origins, and focused on the period from the end of the Second World War (and the discovery of oil deposits on a huge scale), exploitation, wealth, and counter-reaction to both as it eventually came to rest in Bin Laden and Zawahiri. It is, without a doubt, the best book I've ever read on how we came to the place we were on 9/11/01. If you haven't read it, you simply must do so, but don't just rely on me, Josh Marshall has come to agree.

What Lawrence Wright says about the effect of domestic and international politics on groups like Al Qaeda is authoritative and should be listened to:

The best ally in the struggle against violent Islamism is moderate Islam. The unfounded attacks on the backers of Park51 and others, along with such sideshows as a pastor calling for the burning of Korans, give substance to the Al Qaeda argument that the U.S. is waging a war against Islam, rather than against the terrorists’ misshapen effigy of that religion. Those stirring the pot in this debate are casting a spell that is far more dangerous than they may imagine.

Funny how the not-Mosque not-at-Ground Zero has completely covered up the fact that until the 9/11 attacks there actually was a not-Mosque AT Ground Zero.

Sometime in 1999, a construction electrician received a new work assignment from his union. The man, Sinclair Hejazi Abdus-Salaam, was told to report to 2 World Trade Center, the southern of the twin towers...

Over the next few days, noticing some fellow Muslims on the job, Mr. Abdus-Salaam voiced an equally essential question: “So where do you pray at?” And so he learned about the Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the south tower.

He went there regularly in the months to come, first doing the ablution known as wudu in a washroom fitted for cleansing hands, face and feet, and then facing toward Mecca to intone the salat prayer.

On any given day, Mr. Abdus-Salaam’s companions in the prayer room might include financial analysts, carpenters, receptionists, secretaries and ironworkers. There were American natives, immigrants who had earned citizenship, visitors conducting international business — the whole Muslim spectrum of nationality and race.

And in further items never to be googled by Gretchen Carlson:

Moreover, the prayer room was not the only example of Muslim religious practice in or near the trade center. About three dozen Muslim staff members of Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the north tower, used a stairwell between the 106th and 107th floors for their daily prayers.

How many of those staff members died on 9/11 only to have the likes of Pam Geller piss on their memories?

I don't like having a beard, I've shaved religiously since my early 20s. But somehow late last week I had some sort of middle-aged acne disaster around my nose that has turned into an ugly scab just under my nose. Sort of a mini-Hitler-stache. So I am presently growing a goatee under duress.

Now that Mr. Bush is no longer in the White House, nativists are back on the warpath. Some opponents of President Obama are circulating bald-faced lies about him that are also scurrilous attacks on Islam itself. One e-mail bouncing around falsely accuses Mr. Obama of lying and adds, “His Muslim faith says it’s okay to lie.”

Or there’s the e-mail I received the other day from a relative, declaring: “President Obama has directed the United States Postal Service to remember and honor the Eid Muslim holiday season with a new commemorative 44 cent first class holiday postage stamp.” In fact, it was President Bush’s administration that first issued the Eid stamp in 2001 and that issued new versions after that.

Astonishingly, a Newsweek poll finds that 52 percent of Republicans believe that it is “definitely true” or “probably true” that “Barack Obama sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world.” So a majority of Republicans think that our president wants to impose Islamic law worldwide.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Wolcott has this pertinent summation by Robert Fisk, the long-time British and Menkenesque writer who will always have a special place in my cynical heart for how much Andrew Sullivan hated him when the Iraq occupation was shiny and new.

Indeed, on this grim ninth anniversary - and heaven spare us next year from the 10th - 9/11 appears to have produced not peace or justice or democracy or human rights, but monsters. They have prowled Iraq - both the Western and the local variety - and slaughtered 100,000 souls, or 500,000, or a million; and who cares? They have killed tens of thousands in Afghanistan; and who cares? And as the sickness has spread across the Middle East and then the globe, they - the air force pilots and the insurgents, the Marines and the suicide bombers, the al-Qa'idas of the Maghreb and of the Khalij and of the Caliphate of Iraq and the special forces and the close air support boys and the throat-cutters - have torn the heads off women and children and the old and the sick and the young and healthy, from the Indus to the Mediterranean, from Bali to the London Tube; quite a memorial to the 2,966 innocents who were killed nine years ago...

And yes, the awfulness of next year's decade after the attack is going to be the most degenerate irredeemable hatefest yet.

Yesterday, the Rude Pundit was walking down near Ground Zero, New York City, as one must sometimes do in the course of day-to-day activities, when heard someone over a megaphone say, "Never forget. Never forget," repeatedly, flatly, almost mournfully. This was on the corner of Broadway and Fulton, across the street from St. Paul's Chapel, one block from the former World Trade Center twin towers. He turned to see what this was, thinking perhaps another protest.

Instead, he saw four figures. Two men, one with a voice that sounded like a megaphone and a sign that read, "Support Our Heroes," the other with an American flag. And two people wearing what seemed to be brightly smiling ping-pong ball outfits. And, oh, dear, kind readers, the Rude Pundit is not lying to you when he says that one of the ping-pong balls had a "9" emblazoned on it and the other had an "11." They also wore caps.

Meanwhile, also never forget that feeling you had on 9/12/2001, when you'd never heard of that Glenn Beck asshole.

Fox News' Neil Cavuto decided Michelle Obama had been given enough precious 9/11 airtime for her speech in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, so he interrupted the live broadcast to say of Barack Obama, "nine years ago this day, he was a nobody."

Saturday, September 11, 2010

I watched the English Premier League comeback of Everton to draw Manchester United earlier today -- 3 to 3 so it was wild by soccer standards.

Anyway I just saw a picture of the father of Man U and Everton players Phil Neville and Gary Neville respectively. Their father's first name is Neville. That's right his full name is "Neville Neville".